There’s a very interesting article on the IGDA.org site about why over working your employees doesn’t work. This all comes up from the ea_spouse post a few months back about people working 87 hours a week for extended periods on a particular team at EA.
Unfortunately it doesn’t actually seem to ring true to me. Of course I would like to work no more than 8 hours a day and right now I am but in the past I’ve worked far more than that and my gut tells me that basically it’s what’s required. While all the studies described seem to make sense they don’t match my experience which is basically that during the day 10 to 6 there are so many distractions that it’s nearly impossible to get work done. And I’m not talking about distractions like people talking around me, I’m talking about meetings and other things I need to be a part of to get my job done, to be informed of what’s going on with the team, etc.
So, those distractions happen from 10 to 6 then dinner around 7 then coming back from dinner the real work happens after 8:30 when most of the rest of the people have left. Maybe it’s all in my head and days like that are the exception not the rule. Maybe my time is mis-managed. Maybe I have too many responsibilities as in the responsibility to stay abreast of all that is going on and the responsibity to program something are too much for one person and should be split. Maybe management sucks and if they were more organized, keeping my abreast of the project would take less time leaving more for the coding.
I don’t really know what the answer is but I do know quite a few people living that life by choice that see no way around it. To get all the stuff done they need to get done requires them to work 10am to 11pm during the entire project. Are they really deluding themsevles? Would they some how get more done if they only worked 10am to 6pm. That’s extremely hard to believe. Maybe they are just exceptional people. Certainly, one rule about 8hrs a day can’t fit everyone. Some people can probably only be productive 6 hours a day, other can go for 12. There’s got to be a bell curve for that.
If they are not exceptional people, are they just over worked? Should they split their job? The article above would have you believe that they are actually getting less done at 11-13 hours a day then they would at 8 hours day. That sure, one 13 hour day now and then would help productivity but these guys have been doing this for YEARS and according to the article above their productively and efficiency should actually have dropped to the point they they are getting less done than if they worked 8 hours a day. I know they don’t believe this. I find it hard to myself but that article……well…….?
How many consecutive all-nighters have you pulled? I think I worked for about 60-odd hours during one crunch time. That sucked.
Certainly, demanding developers work from ten to six and then demand they stay longer to make sure that tasks get completed and they make up for their unproductve hours is ineffeicient. It is quite likely that they could produce more in less hours.
I think game development is very similar to any other creative activity. It is what my old linguistic’s professor used to call a “liberal profession.” That is, unlike your regular product or service industry jobs, it requires a certain amount of inspiration to perform.
It is very hard to make an artist do his best work by sitting him in a cubicle at 8:30am with sleep in eyes and a coffee in his hand, or a programmer for that matter. Certainly, you can chug away at the technical, no–brainer tasks, like UV mapping or data entry, but for great creative work the inspiration has to be there. For reason it is common for people to work better at night when there are no distractions.
This, of course, makes it very difficult to keep track of how many hours worked or how productive a developer is. Ideally, you would want to calculate how long a project would take when developers are at their most productive and allow them to work to their own schedule, however that opens up plenty of opportunity for developers to slack off or change their schedule to suit some outside interest.
Another possibiltiy is to keep a small core team of devoted individuals and outsource work wherever possible. This can cut costs, since a lot of jobs can be done in developing countries (if you are confident they won’t rip your game off) and also facilitate budgeting. For example, if you outsource to a freelance artist, you can stipulate something like “$2000 for fully animated character models by XX/XX/XX,” then you don’t need to worry about their office hours so long as the task gets done.
I think that the 8 hour article is correct for most people on a team. However, the very select key people on a team probably need to work a lot more. They hold the weight of the rest of the team.
What really should happen is the key people work the long hours and be very highly compensated because of it.
I suspect most of those 8 hours studies are for people who see their job purely as a means to get money. If you are pissed off at having to work more hours then that stress is going to make you unproductive. If you feel you are working by choice, then I don’t think those studies apply.
that’s a really good point about people that enjoy their job vs people that don’t. Unfortunately it rarely solves the problem though. I don’t think a game company (or any company) could only hire people they know love making games so much that they’ll put in 10-12 hrs a day. So, your left with 1 or 2 people that do and then all the rest of the staff that while they might enjoy it they don’t enjoy it enough to give up their life for it.
Others would say even if it is something you enjoy most people need balance to do it well.
In practise I think the most one can hope for is a critical mass of dedicated key people, which ties in with what BillyZelsnack said. The trick is finding a company that has attained critical mass.
I’ve heard that balance statement made before, but I think that again is related to stress levels. I read an article once (cannot find it unfortunately) that mentioned there are 2 types of people with regard to stress. Most people accumulate stress and need to do non stressful activities to reduce that stress (i.e. have balance). High achievers on the other hand thrive on stress. During the day their stress levels can go very high, but at the end of the day their stress level goes back to normal.
I used to work in the game industry.
I used to love games.
But there was never any end to the stress.
“I expect you to be here this weekend.”
“If you can’t achieve results quicker, you have no future here.”
“You’re pretty much on-call till we ship.”
“Hours? We’re pretty much here all the time.”
I spent twelve years in the game industry. By the time I left , I was a complete wreck. The only way I could keep up with the incredible and continually increasing demands for performance was to think about nothing but my job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I didn’t have a single date for the entire 12 years I was employed.
By the end, I was contemplating suicide. Because my job was my life, and I couldn’t see any way to continue doing my job. I sought mental counciling, but I could hardly take time away from work to see a doctor.
Needless to say, I burned out.
It took me several months of counseling to seperate my identity from my job. Working in the game industry made me feel insignificant and worthless, made me feel like an idiot whose skills were barely adequate to do anything. No matter how hard I worked, no matter how many hours I put in, it was never enough for them… never good enough for them.
I never did find another job. I told recruiters that I wanted an 8 hour day and they stopped calling.
I banged around for about nine months, not really knowing what to do with myself. I tried to get some contract work, but everybody eventually flaked on me… in the last 6 months of 2004 I made all of $1700… maybe.
So I printed up a little flier and started sticking it under doors of businesses and in free papers on my street. It said “Need Computer Help? Call US!”
Strangely enough, this worked. People actually did call me. As it turned out, lots of people need stuff done with computers that is very simple to me, but very complicated to the layman. I not nearly so stupid and worthless as my experience in the game industry led me to believe.
Now, I’ve got customers calling all the time… I’ve got more work than I can keep up with… and I’m constantly crunching on the hours.
But this time it’s different.
This time, I’m the boss.
It’s MY CHOICE if I want to work extra hours. It’s my choice if I want to make a higher quality product. I set the priorities in the schedule. I’ve nobody else to rely on, and nobody else to blame.
It’s not so much the hours in the game industry that are the problem so much as that they are REQUIRED. If one guy in the company is going to work late, then he raises the bar for the others and everybody else has to work late. Eventually, the company won’t even hire people who are not willing to work late. And so they just burn through people until they can’t do it anymore. There is a reason that all game industry salary surveys top out at 6 years… most folks burn out by then. The company I worked for had a 100% turnover in gameplay programmers while I was there… the only ones who were around for all three games were principals of the company or their relatives…
Me… I can’t even PLAY games anymore… the memories make me ill. And I used to LOVE games and do nothing else. I’m not a slacker, I’m just not 25 anymore…
I think the surveys are, on average, correct. On those kind of schedules, eventually, the productivity will drop. There aren’t enough supermen in the world to fill all the seats in the game industry, so we’d be wise to come up with a more sustainable model that works for everyone, and not just supermen…
— Timon –
SoftEgg Enterprises
http://www.softegg.com
it is my experience that those who work more than 8 hours a day in corporate america are very afraid of losing their job because they have been tricked into thinking they can do nothing else. any corporate salary is plenty to survive on and still have some left over for building an identity outside of work. but they get the scrooge mcduck syndrome.
from 1999 i am working with a company who are fabric producer.i am ian the marketing department , management give me pressure for to collect more order but they was faield to keep the commitment . so iwas frustreated.in the year of 2004 i realized that i catr work here becouse of the presure of buyer .
in this company iwas work for the money . but now i am working for mental setisfaction . i am happy to do this work which i am doing .
now my activities is if i collect order so i will get a commission
so no tence .
if i want so i can leave office any time
so every person has to think before to join with a company .